We'd passed by this restaurant many times and I was automatically attracted to the word "Balkan"...
The last time I had Balkan food was four years ago at Djerdan Borek in Astoria, Queens. It was time to give Balkan food another go!
Lots of tables inside but empty when we were there.
Their menu which you can also view online here:
We ordered an appetizer and one main dish to share.
I liked this part of the menu, phrases in Serbo-Croatian.
The beer recommended by our server, Karlovacko, is a popular beer in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is bottled in the city of Karlovac in central Croatia. It's a light beer with a golden color that Bert said went down pretty easy. It wasn't bitter or anything. Here are some reviews from beeradvocate.com.
This was...TC's drink. Doesn't it look like a milkshake or something? Well it wasn't. This was a MANGO SMOOTHIE. It was so dark and I was a bit put off by the color. It was topped by whipped cream and chocolate sauce, and yes, that was also chocolate sauce in there. TC said that the mango flavor wasn't really strong but more milky tasting and it "made her tongue feel kind of wierd" (her exact words). Ewww.
Now, this was the Serbian cornbread (three big pieces, and yay, one was a corner!) served with either sour cream or honey. I asked our server which she preferred personally and she said, "In my country, we eat with sour cream", so sour cream it was!
The corn bread was really fragrant and not like any other cornbread I've had in the past. There was a corn flavor, but the texture was not dry or crumbly. No, this was quite moist and a bit spongy. In fact, the texture and the flavor was almost like this type of bibingka that my mom used to make that I really really love. I asked our server what made it so moist and she said it was cream cheese which floored me because that's exactly what my mom put in her bibingka! Wow, two completely different cultures but with similar bread. These pieces were so big that we couldn't even finish them. We were trying to save some room for the main dish...
This was the Chevapi plate. We've had similar at Bosniam places (Sarajevo in Chicago and Bosnia Grill at local farmers' markets and festivals). The chevapi are sausages served with pita, chopped onions, even more sour cream, and ajvar (a thick sauce made of tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and sometimes eggplant). The pita bread (lepinja) is thick and spongy not tough and flat like the kind I associate with Greek pita (sorry Greek food lovers). I really like the texture of this bread and may try making it one day.
Awww yeah...
and more of those chevapi...when the sausages are small and tiny, they are called cevapcici.
We had a great meal here. Not too much food but just enough to get a taste of something new (the cornbread) and familiar (the sausages).
Two Brothers Cafe & Grill
829 SE 39th St. (at Belmont)
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 232-3424
An on a totally different note, I'm really loving the score to "The Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn Part 2" by Carter Burwell (who scored the first movie and "BD-Part 1"; he also did "Fargo" and "In Bruges"). I don't know about you, but when I hear a movie score, I relive scenes from the movie in my head. It's a way for me to enjoy the movie without having to see it again. I'm so anal that I re-arrange music soundtracks and intermix them with the score so that it can be "in order" as it was played or appeared in the movie. I've done that to all the movies that I liked.
This is the song that plays when Bella finally steps into the sunlight, right after she wins her arm wrestling match with Emmett (I know it sounds silly but readers of the book or folks who watched the movie will know what I'm talking about):
She finally got to play a badass vampire rather than a shy, clumsy human girl. And what's up with Jacob Black running in that scene (in the screen capture on youtube)? He wasn't even in that scene, at least in human form!
And because we still had some room left, we headed over to do another "repeat" at a food pod, also in the same area...
2 comments:
zomg so much carbs. I <3.
Way too many carbs eh! But it tastes so good!
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